Search Engine Land on OPA; NY Times on Mullen; BlueKai CEO Tawakol on Free Media; Skechers on Behavioral; MediaMath Remarketing

Greg Sterling delivers the OPA case on display advertising to search marketers on Search Engine Land. In the process, Greg digs up 2008 data from Tacoda (now AOL's property) regarding clickers. Sterling concludes, "The bottom line is that a CTR is not a good measure of consumer intent, engagement or value as a metric for display advertising." This will be a tough nut to swallow for search marketers initially. But if they can effectively track attribution with display and search campaigns running simultaneously, display's positive impact on overall results (shown in this December study by Comscore, for example) may whet the appetite for SEM's to explore display.

"Orbitz’s decision to hand over creative duties to an agency outside the realm of Madison Avenue demonstrates how marketers are seeking to think differently as they cope with changing consumer behavior and the effects of the recession... ...And other marketers have hired agencies that specialize in interactive advertising to create campaigns that appear in traditional media as well as online."

BlueKai's Omar Tawakol preaches the value of internet advertising on AdAge in "Advertising: The Price of 'Free' Media." The underlying premise is that if publishers don't make clear with consumers the case for using behavioral data - anonymous data - in advertising, the internet economy will go back to the dark ages. Here, here.

Tawakol writes:

"We can't ask for free content while asking advertisers to serve untargeted ads. In the long run the economics just don't work for the advertisers that sponsor the content."

"[Skechers' VP of Direct Marketing and e-commerce Laura Christine] put 94% of the company's entire online budget into retargeting. Christine reduced Skechers' partnerships to seven ad networks from 20. While Geier couldn't recall her exact return on investment, he says the ROI exceeded 200% on more than $2 million in revenue."

A new mobile (do you say mo-bull or mo-BILE?) study from the IAB is covered by Mobile Europe. Thankfully, for the sake of the mobile display ad industry, results of the study were positive and provided five key takeaways:

Use mobile to raise awareness.

Mobile advertising can be effective across all demographics, especially 18-34s.

Media6Degrees co-founder Dave Honig announced he has left the company as of June 29 to "pursue other opportunities," but will continue on their advisory board. Honig adds in his Media6 email auto-respond message, "I am very proud at the tremendous growth I have been a part of since the very early stages back in July 2007."

Eric Friedman, an analyst at Union Square Ventures and blogger at www.marketing.fm, gives Media Math's remarketing technology a try and reports a bit on its functionality:

"The gist of it is that once you come to an advertisers website and navigate away, you may come across ads for the original pages product or services on MediaMath’s affiliated publishers sites. This gives the advertiser the power to remarket to a user that has some interest in their brand, shown by visiting their site."

We look forward to hearing about the results of Eric's experiment.

Ad exchange players can't seem to get enough data. Varick's Darren Herman (AdExchanger.com Q&A here) offered a tweet today on data.gov. As Darren notes, the mashup potential on the U.S. government website is extensive - offering data feeds on everything from birth to toxic waste.